Sunday, January 17, 2016

Ode to Gray Cat

One day at least ten years ago I heard a cat mewing in my
garage. She was gray and fluffy and very hungry. She was also mostly feral. I
took her to the vet and they said she was healthy but would be difficult to
find a home for because she was so feral.

I knew we couldn’t keep her because my husband and I had
rescued two stray cats previously and had to find other homes for them because
we both have severe allergic reactions to cats, including asthma, hives, etc. Our kids inherited those allergies, especially my oldest son.

I told my sons we couldn’t keep her and we had to find her
another home. We never could find her another home. No shelter would take her
because they were full and would not take feral cats. She kept the placeholder
name we gave her, Gray Cat.

She had to live outside because of our allergies. We always
felt guilty about that situation, but we had little choice. She lived in our fenced
yard and garage. She was always sneaking into the house and we all suffered
greatly when she did. But it happened too many times for it to be accidental.

I think she was a gift for my oldest son. She taught him
love, compassion, and personal sacrifice. Holding Gray Cat, brushing her, and
petting her were always personal sacrifices because of the subsequent
allergy-induced suffering.

In the summer I would wear a mask and goggles when I brushed
her and cleaned her litter box because she would shed fur in never-ending
storms of hair and dander. She loved to be brushed while she lay rolling in the
granite rocks in the sun.

She always came out to greet us when we returned home. We
talked to her so she talked back to us. Never has a cat talked as much as Gray
Cat. I don’t recommend initiating such conversations with your cat. I had to
apologize to the neighbors for her very loud demands for more attention. She
never could get enough loving.

Gray Cat was a lover. She wanted petting more than food. She
was happiest purring in your lap while allergic welts raised on your skin from
contact with her fur and kneedling claws.

We loved her. She loved us.

She was always skinny. When she became too skinny in 2013 we
brought her to the vet and they said she had a chronic condition characterized
by failure to absorb nutrients. She almost died but my son couldn’t bear her
loss and the vet saved her (at exorbitant cost). Last summer she couldn’t
handle the heat and we had to bring her into the house to save her life.

Yesterday Gray Cat died. We had to euthanize her because she
had kidney failure and the vet couldn’t save her this time, although trying
with dialysis. She died in my arms surrounded by our family.

I believe Gray Cat was a gift to my son with Asperger’s who needed a
teacher to help him with empathy and responsibility toward the other. She was
the perfect teacher. He is heartbroken.

I told him Gray Cat knew the time was right to leave us
because she had come for him and he had moved on to college.

The rather famous medical doctor, Andrew Weil, writes in one of his many books that after he took LSD his cat allergy disappeared as well as a tendency to sun burn easily. Interestingly a very thorough search through LSD research concluded that it had no known physiological or psychological harmful effects on humans. Virtually non-toxic. So the Federal Government is preventing what might actually benefit persons in a wide variety of ways.

About Me

I am a Professor at a large public university. I study political economy and biopolitics (the politics of life). My interests are diverse but are broadly concerned with economic, social and environmental justice. I have published 5 books: Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy and Ecological Sustainability: The Threat of Financial and Energy Complexes in the Twenty-First Century (2016); Fukusima and the Privatization of Risk (2013); Constructing Autism (2005); Governmentality, Biopower and Everyday Life (2008/2011); Governing Childhood (2010).
I also participated in an edited collection on Fukushima: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization (2014).